


Passing

by samalander



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you can't pass for normal anymore, what can you do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted a conversation about not being able to go out and be "normal" anymore, with a nod to "passing" in the sense of X-Men as a metaphor for the Civil Rights movement. I have no idea if this is any of that, but it's my try.

_**FIC: Passing**_  
 **Title:** Passing  
 **Author:** [](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/profile)[**_samalander**](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/)  
 **Fandom:** X-Men: First Class  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Wordcount:** 1529  
 **Warnings:** Vague ablism, in the form of Charles just post-injury.  
 **Characters/Pairings:** Charles and Hank  
 **Summary:** When you can't pass for normal anymore, what can you do?  
 **Notes:** I wanted a conversation about not being able to go out and be "normal" anymore, with a nod to "passing" in the sense of X-Men as a metaphor for the Civil Rights movement. I have no idea if this is any of that, but it's my try.

For [](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/profile)[**rubynye**](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/) , because apparently she is my XMFC muse. As always, with love to [](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[**emmypenny**](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) for telling me it was good.

While Charles is still healing from the beach, he rejects all visitors. Not because he's hurting (though he is) and not because they're not Erik (they're not) but because Charles is a goddamn telepath and he can feel, he can hear, whatever – he knows what they're all going to say. He doesn't need Sean and Alex with their _sorry_ that isn't even really for Charles. They're for themselves, the sorry, the self-indulgent apologies of those who know better than to stand by, but do it anyway.

Not that they could have done anything, Charles knows that. Moira thinks she could have, thinks it was dumb to fire at Erik after he began deflecting, but he refuses her entry, too, because he doesn't want her guilt any more than he wants Alex and Sean's remorse and pity.

The only person Charles sees in his waking life (because sleeping is full of them, all of them, Angel and Raven and Erik and Shaw, oh god, Shaw and how he screamed in his mind while Erik killed him and there was no choice, no choice at all but to hold him, but the pain and the fear and the anger that had flowed into Charles, it was beyond cognition) is Hank. Poor, blue, Hank.

They're two of a kind now, Charles thinks, and he gets the correct phrasing from Hank – monsters of a feather.

They don't speak much socially to begin; conversations at first are about treatment and building wheelchairs and walkers and artificial legs. Charles opts for the chair because, at heart, he is a vain man. He likes his legs, numb though they might be, and the idea of prosthesis sets his teeth on edge. (It's a flaw, he thinks, remembering the one with the metal over his bones, the one who can change parts of herself to water, the one who could phase out of reality to walk through walls. What is flesh to them, what is it to Charles? He has to rethink these things, he has to come to terms, but first there is a personal journey, one for himself and those with him, to redefine human within their own parameters [mutant and proud] before incorporating all the definitions that are sure to come with new arrivals. [What was flesh to Raven, was it blue or pink or neither, he never asked the woman he thought of as a sibling what she felt her skin was and that isn't okay, she's gone now.])

Charles takes a deep breath. It hurts to think of Raven, of Erik, as gone, as part of the group that he had classified as enemy. In a community so small (not small, just unformed, just underground) it hurts to lose them like it hurts to lose a limb – and Charles would know, better than anyone.

\---

Hank builds a beautiful wheelchair, simplistic and elegant and just as Charles himself would have done, had he the concentration at the moment, but Charles hates it on sight. It's not that he can't walk now, that doesn't bother him so much, because he's a goddamned telepath and things will learn to come to him if he needs them, it's the stigma. It's the everlasting mark of what happened that day, what stood between him and Erik, the betrayal of his sister. (And who betrayed who, Charles goes back and forth there, but he stands with the fact – so to speak – that there was wrong done, by one of them at least.)

Hank finally says something, something real, a week after Charles sends Moira away. (And that hurt, telling her to go, taking himself away from her, but he had to, he really really had to because she was going to stay and she did this to him, as much as Erik did, and he knows it's selfish, knows they need all the allies they can get, but he couldn't look at her. One day, the day when he gets himself back together, he'll go and see her, he'll make it right, but not today, not while the scars are still red.) Hank looks at him, honey-brown intelligent eyes rimmed in electric blue fur, and says, "At least you still look like a person."

One needn't be a telepath to know Hank is angry- the destroyed lab told them all, before they even knew where he was, what had happened. Charles just nods. "A very short one," he says, and wishes Hank would laugh. Not that Hank often laughed when he was furless, but since the change Charles hasn't seen so much as a smile from the young man.

"It's not funny," Hank growls, and it's a literal description, the way his lip curls and his fur bristles.

"No," Charles agrees, "very little is funny right now."

They lapse into silence. Hank is calibrating something on the chair, brakes, maybe, or seat cushiness, Charles doesn’t know.

"You're always welcome here, Hank," Charles tells him, for lack of anything more substantial to say. He could tell some kind of lie about a cure or a hope, but Hank's best hope is to stay hidden, stay away from the people who would hurt him for looking the way he does. In a part of his memory he'd forgotten, Charles recalls a young Raven at school one day, at a Halloween celebration, showing her skin for what is was, all the blue and bumps and truth of it, and the mocking sneers of the young boys in their Captain America costumes. Raven had been scared, after that, scared for months, petrified that she would slip up and show someone what she was. But Raven could hide. Raven did hide, for years. Hank can’t. Hank is what he is, blue and furry and _mutant_. No shoes can cover him up now.

Hank nods, not meeting Charles' eye.

"Where will you go?"

"I don’t know," Hank sighs. "But I can't – not with Alex and Sean and—"

Charles smiles. "And the people who knew you before?"

Hank nods, and Charles realizes he is ashamed of something, embarrassed for a reason. He toys with the idea of stealing the answer, but decides against it, decides to let Hank come out with it, whatever it may be.

"I was-" Hank starts, and stops when his voice cracks to pluck at his fur. It takes a moment, but he regains his composure and soldiers on. "I was awful to her," he says. "To Raven."

Charles doesn't say "me too," but he thinks it just short of broadcast. "How so?"

"I made this – the serum? I made it so she could look normal. Because I thought she would be more beautiful with pale skin and blonde hair."

Charles nods. She _was_ beautiful with the blond hair and the pale skin, with the mask she wore. The disguise was pretty, but in the end it was still a disguise, a mark of shame, and he's beginning to realize, just on the outskirts of his mind, that the blue had its own appeal, its own texture and luster that no one else has ever had. Raven was utterly unique in the world; a being of any beauty she chose, of any skin she wanted to wear, and the world thought of her as a freak, as someone who should be made to cover up and hide.

"And now-" Hank starts, but stops himself because Charles has a twinge, he makes a face of pain, and needs a moment to get himself back into the ocean of calm in which he lives.

"And now," Charles prompts, and Hank just shrugs.

They stare for a moment, neither man saying the things he is thinking, but they communicate anyway, they let it be said that they were both wrong, that they miss her, that they deserve this, for all they've done.

"Now I'll never be an actual, respected engineer," Hank says, "I'll never work anywhere, I'll never walk on the moon or meet the president. I wanted to do those things, all those things."

Charles nods. There are things now he'll never do, never feel sand between his toes again, never climb the satellite dish, never ride a horse, but they're fond memories, they're things he has done. Things he can at least say happened. Hank has lost something more, or thinks he has. Charles wants to tell him that he can still be all the things he was, that he can still design engines and costumes and brilliant mutant-finding spheres. But Charles doesn't want to lie to the boy, doesn't want to give him false hopes.

"It was easy," Hank says, like he's forgotten Charles was there, "before. Put on shoes, go be smart. Now, now everyone who looks at me will know there's something wrong."

Charles nods. "They will. And they will be cruel. So stay here, Hank, stay and we can all be wrong together."

Hank doesn't say anything. He nods slightly, and turns back to Charles' chair, futzing with it again. Charles again flirts with the idea of stealing his answer, but schools himself to patience. The answer will come when Hank is ready to give it.


End file.
